The bothy roared with the tuning, and then the air came melting and sweet from the chanter. Eight steps up, four, to the turn, and eight down went Paruig, and the _piobaireachd_ rolled to his fingers like a man's rhyming. The two men sat on, the stools, with their elbows on their knees, and listened.
He played but the _urlar_, and the _crunluadh_ to save time, and he played them well.
"Good indeed! Splendid, my old fellow!" cried the two; and said Gilian, "You have a way of it in the _crunluadh_ not my way, but as good as ever I heard."
"It is the way of Padruig Og," said Rory.
"Well I know it! There are tunes and tunes, and 'The Vaunting' is not bad in its way, but give me 'The Macraes' March.'"
He jumped to his feet and took the pipes from the old man's hands, and over his shoulder with the drones.
"Stand back, lad!" he cried to Gilian, and Gilian went nearer the door.
The march came fast to the chanter--the old tune, the fine tune that Kintail has heard before, when the wild men in their red tartan came over hill and moor; the tune with the river in it, the fast river and the courageous that kens not stop nor tarry, that runs round rock and over fall with a good humour, yet no mood for anything but the way before it. The tune of the heroes, the tune of the pinelands and the broad straths, the tune that the eagles of Loch Duich crack their beaks together when they hear, and the crows of that country-side would as soon listen to as the squeal of their babies.
"Well! mighty well!" said Paruig Dali. "You have the tartan of the clan in it."
"Not bad, I'll allow," said Gilian. "Let me try."
He put his fingers on the holes, and his heart took a leap back over two generations, and yonder was Glencoe! The grey day crawled on the white hills and the Mack roofs smoked below. Snow choked the pass, _eas_ and corn filled with drift and flatted to the brae-face; the wind tossed quirky and and in the little bashes and among the smooring lintels and joists; the Mood of old and young lappered on the hearthstone, and the bairn, with a knifed throat, had an icy lip on a frozen teat. Out of the place went the tramped path of the Campbell butchers--far on their way to Glenlyon and the towns of paper and ink and liars--"Muinntir a' ghlinne so, muinntir a' ghlinne so!--People, people, people of this glen, this glen, this glen!"